Thanks Sam. I struck out “a week” and have adjusted the time frame. For anyone else’s reference, the date of the interrogation was July 15th, 2008. I had originally “read” it as June 15th. At any rate, that makes it 5 weeks after Travis’ body was discovered on June 9, 2008.

Another well written and thought out article. Your perception is very mature and realistic, in a world of fantasy and delusion, of violence and narcissism running rampant. What really jumped off the page was this tidbit of reality: “… the trial judge over-turned the verdict saying that the prosecutors’ description of her “lifestyle” was so inflammatory that it deprived Sommer of a fair trial.”

It\s quite apparent to many who can apply critical thinking and ‘reality testing’ that fairness in this trial of Jodi Arias is non-existant. The misconduct hearings will be interesting to say the least. If Judge Stephens hears those arguments, it will all be swept under the carpet. I can’t vouch for a ‘objective, impartial judge’. One can have hope that the obvious bias in this trial is enough to warrent a re-trial or that all of the ‘cumulative’ evidence can be used for appeal. This case is wrong right from the investigation straight on up.

I know I go about commenting on this trial a little differently than others. haha. But I am quite fascinated by how the mechanisms of our “visual culture” have operated with this trial (and others too). My background is in art so I tend to link a lot of these things back to my knowledge base. Thank you for reading and commenting! Lissa

Superb.
I love the way you link visual symbols (e.g. ribbons) and the visual arts with the reality of this trial and all its offshoots. Art is meant to make us reflect on and find insight about real life – it is an artifice created in order to help us understand and become more in touch with reality. Instead we now have pseudo-reality, whether in highly directed and scripted “reality” TV or in reality warped into more palatable myths mimicking art – especially fairy-tale fiction with, as you said, its archetypes. So instead of art symbolizing and reflecting reality we have “reality” representing a grotesque and low-brow form of “pop”-art.
Andy Warhol would be appalled.

Ha! Great article. That one is a keeper. Thanks for posting it here. Will be visiting and rereading that one again. Contemporary media culture certainly is fascinating. Stirs up all sorts of wonky ways of thinking. Fantasy is harmless as long as it doesn’t skew one’s perspective so much that real life is viewed through that spectrum.